Computer aided animation techniques have advanced dramatically in recent years. In particular, the animation of human, animal and fantastical figures has become increasingly more realistic. Contemporary computer animated figures appear to have natural body, head and facial movements. However, despite the advances in animating realistic facial movements and expressions, animators still struggle with the difficulties of animating realistic or lifelike eye movements.
In the absence of realistic or lifelike eye movements, the eyes of animated figures tend to remain fixed relative to the movements of the figures' head and body. People are very attuned to eye contact and eye movement, and imperfect or unnatural eye movements can be very conspicuous, if not off putting at times. When the eyes of an animated figure do not move as they are expected to move or as a real animal or human actor would move, the figures appear to be dead or “zombie-like” and thus produces a less than realistic or unbelievable rendering.
Various techniques have been developed to correct the look and feel of animated eyes in animated figures. However, the techniques typically used to correct or retarget animated eyes require either expensive eye specific animation in addition to the body and face animation or arduous and some what impractical manual corrections. Such solutions are only truly usable if the animator has sufficient time or computing power to correct the deadness of animated eyes. As such, solutions that require significant processor or animator time are not useful for real-time rendering such as that found in computer and video games were zombie-like eyes are problematic and ubiquitous.
It is clear that there is a need for a system and method to correct the gaze of animated eyes of animated figures that does not require expensive amounts of computer processor or animator time. Embodiments of the present invention solve these and other problems.